Finance Bill

The challenge is that the Government already recognise that there is a problem. I noticed earlier that the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy) was in her seat. Let me remind the House about what she said last year, when she was the Financial Secretary, in response to an intervention from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead; She recognised that there was a continuing problem and said:""I want to reassure him that we will return to this issue in the pre-Budget report, as the Chancellor has said, not only in front of the Select Committee but elsewhere. He will bring forward concrete proposals, and they will be implementable as soon as possible."—[Official Report, 1 July 2008; Vol. 478, c. 741.]" I thought that a very clear commitment, and I think that the right hon. Gentleman and a number of other Labour Members did too. It was on the basis of the right hon. Lady's reassurance that the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) withdrew his new clause at the time. So a year ago, a clear commitment was given by the then Financial Secretary—and by the Chancellor elsewhere—to compensate the 1.1 million households that had not been fully compensated. The clear message was that that would happen in the pre-Budget report. The pre-Budget report, of course, has come and gone without the package having been put in place, and that is why we are debating it today. There was an exchange of views between the Financial Secretary and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead about the number of people who had lost out through the scrapping of the 10p rate. The IFS estimates that 0.9 million people are still worse off by more than £1 a week as a consequence. We are here to press the Government to come forward with proposals that will compensate those who were not fully compensated as a result of the proposals announced in May last year. The Government cannot cast aside lightly, and without any consequence, the commitments made in last year's debate and by the Chancellor. Having started this process in 2007, having denied that there were losers despite the evidence, having made a concession under pressure last year, and having defused a revolt at the Report stage of the Finance Bill in 2008 by committing to act in the pre-Budget report and yet failing to do so, it is time for the Government to be held to account by Parliament. This is not a partisan issue—it is about the House asserting itself and forcing the Executive to live up to the promises that they made to this legislature last year. It is time for the Government to redeem the promise that they made. They have had time to reflect on how to compensate the people who were not fully compensated last year, and to bring forward measures to help those people; in failing to do so, they have broken their promise to the House. We now have the chance, by supporting new clause 1, to force the Government to keep to their promise not only to Members of this House but to the people who have lost out as a consequence of the scrapping of the 10p rate.